Europe's lab-to-market gap draws proposals from network of more than 120 scientist-innovators

A new policy forum published in Science outlines a plan to improve Europe's ability to transform scientific discoveries into commercial products and businesses. The paper, titled "Enhancing Europe's Competitiveness by Empowering Researchers as Innovators," proposes several reforms to streamline the process from fundamental research to commercialization.

The network INPACT!, comprised of over 120 scientist-innovators from 20 countries, including European Research Council grantees, analyzed the European Union's Horizon Europe program. They argue that funding remains fragmented and that significant gaps exist between funding programs, hindering the transition from scientific discovery to technology development and commercialization.

A key proposal is to integrate ERC Proof of Concept grants under the EIC governance, creating a more continuous pathway from discovery to commercialization. This change could reduce the number of evaluations, simplify transitions between programs, and provide more predictable support for researchers and investors.

The forum also calls for increased support for early-stage, high-risk innovation, with the current combined annual funding for EIC Pathfinder and Transition programs amounting to roughly €500 million. The authors recommend reallocating resources towards breakthrough innovation and granting independent program managers more authority to guide promising projects.

Europe is currently stuck in a middle-technology trap, specializing in mature industries like automotive and industrial machinery, while frontier sectors such as AI and biotechnology remain underdeveloped. To boost competitiveness and strategic autonomy, the authors suggest rebuilding the pipeline from scientific discovery to market, better funding promising ideas, and enabling researchers and innovators to turn breakthroughs into high-tech industries.

The authors emphasize that Europe's strength lies not in the quality of its research but in the need to create better conditions for excellent research to translate into innovation and societal value. This requires supporting researchers in protecting, developing, and transferring their work, recognizing entrepreneurship and technology transfer as integral parts of the scientific mission.

To foster this environment, universities and technology transfer offices should create conditions that allow researchers to pursue innovation without having to choose between an academic career and entrepreneurship. The reform recommendations include greater recognition of entrepreneurship in academic careers, improved intellectual property management, clearer routes to patents, industrial partnerships, and spin-offs, along with better access to mentoring and entrepreneurial expertise.